Procter & Gamble

Blind shoppers, low-vision shoppers, and people with limited dexterity use Procter & Gamble packaging with tactile markers, easier lids, and audio-readable codes in order to identify and open everyday goods with less guesswork and help from others.

ENABLE Model location

• Builder-side Interventions → Set Requirements that Include Accessibility
• Builder-side Interventions → Create Accessible Content
• Builder-side Interventions → Design Accessible Experiences
• Builder-side Interventions → Develop Accessible Implementations
• Builder-side Interventions → Test for Accessibility
• Builder-side Interventions → Iterate to Address Shortcomings

What it is

Procter & Gamble pushes some accessibility upstream inside mass-market brands such as Herbal Essences, Olay, Ariel, Lenor, and Clearblue. PAC Global's 2025 case study traced that shift to 2015, when Sumaira "Sam" Latif moved from P&G's IT business into inclusive-design work, and to 2019, when she became the company's first Accessibility Leader.¹ Her role has included interviewing disabled consumers and turning those findings into requirement-setting, content, design, development, qa-testing, and iteration.²¹

The clearest early example is Herbal Essences. Allure, Vogue, and Packaging World each described how P&G worked with Latif, who is blind, on tactile package markers for Herbal Essences bottles so blind and low-vision shoppers could distinguish shampoo from conditioner by touch while showering.³⁴⁵ Packaging World also reported that RNIB focus groups approved the design and that P&G began marking bottles at U.S. plants and selected contract packers in January 2019.⁵

P&G later extended that work into opening force, label clarity, and audio-readable content. Olay's 2021 Easy Open Lid added wings, grip texture, high-contrast labeling, and Braille text after customers complained that the jars were hard to open.⁶⁷ In Europe, Ariel and Lenor packs added tactile symbols and NaviLens codes, and in 2026 P&G said Olay Regenerist had become its first facial moisturizer with a tactile cap symbol in the United States.⁸⁹

Why it matters

Consumer packaging long relied on visual cues before major brands treated touch, legibility, or opening force as access problems.⁴¹⁰¹¹ Packaging research describes visual design cues as core tools for communicating variant, quality, and price.¹⁰ Packaging Dive still summarized the field in 2023 as one where product preservation, theft deterrence, and marketability remained the traditional goals.¹¹ Beauty coverage in 2019 still called accessible packaging rare, and Vogue reported that L'Occitane cited cost and technical constraints when explaining why its Braille program reached about 70% of products rather than all of them.⁴ P&G entered that inherited arrangement in the late 2010s, when blind shoppers still used elastic bands and tape on bottles or asked other people to identify products at home.⁵¹²

Latif brought disability expertise into package briefs, testing rooms, and brand meetings inside a company that created the accessibility leader role only in 2019.²¹ She told Allure that she interviews disabled consumers, brings their frustrations into brand teams, and asks coworkers to try packs while wearing arthritic gloves or sight-loss goggles.² Packaging World reported that P&G then took the Herbal Essences bottles to RNIB for consumer testing and revised earlier symbol ideas after supplier testing showed that other shapes were harder to distinguish by touch.⁵ That sequence moved identification and opening problems upstream into requirement-setting, design, qa-testing, and iteration before products reached the bathroom or laundry room.

Companies and trade publications often present shelf aesthetics, production speed, tooling limits, and retail channel choices as barriers to accessible packaging.⁵¹³¹¹ Packaging World reported that P&G processed "hundreds of bottles a minute" on each bottling line and sought a tactile solution that fit existing production without slowing output.⁵ FoodNavigator quoted RNIB's Marc Powell saying brands still miss accessibility because of "lack of awareness, cost considerations, or a focus on visual aesthetics without considering the diverse needs of consumers."¹³ Those explanations matter, but they do not prove that lower cost or easier tooling would have produced care on their own. P&G's scale can lower search, sorting, and opening labor for millions of shoppers at once. The same scale can also keep access selective. Olay's easier lid launched as a free online add-on instead of ordinary shelf stock. P&G's more accessible cues still arrive one brand, one market, or one award-winning package at a time.⁶⁷⁸⁹ The company can lower part of the precarity that shows up as wasted purchases, extra time, and dependence. It still leaves access uneven across brands, markets, and retail channels.

Wrong purchases, allergic exposure, hand pain, embarrassment, and dependence accumulate when people cannot identify or open everyday products on their own.^613141516 FoodNavigator reported in 2024 that 74% of surveyed visually impaired U.K. adults had picked up the wrong product because of poor packaging guidance, 39% had wasted money, 31% had picked up something they could not eat, and 23% had picked up something they were allergic to.¹³ A 2022 systematic review found that packaging-opening difficulty can lead to patient harm through mismanagement and poor adherence, and that decades of research still showed stagnation in packaging development.¹⁴ A 2005 population study of adults aged 81 and older found that 14% could not open a screw-cap bottle and 32% could not open a snap-lid bottle, with impaired vision and rheumatoid arthritis among the factors associated with lower success.¹⁵ Arthritis Australia published a first-person account describing hard-to-open staple packaging as "physically painful and emotionally degrading" and tied it to lost independence and repeated requests for help.¹⁶

By the late 2010s, accessible packaging at this scale was still rare in beauty and household goods.³⁴⁵ Latif told Allure that she wants tactile stripes and circles on competitors' shampoo and conditioner bottles too, so they become "a universal language."² Olay's lid team said it chose not to patent the Easy Open design so other beauty brands could adapt it.⁷ Those are real frontier moves. The frontier still stops short of ordinary infrastructure. Online-only distribution, partial brand rollout, and continued market evidence in 2024 that blind shoppers still pick up the wrong products or waste money show how much identification and opening labor remains downstream.⁶¹³⁸⁹ P&G has changed what large consumer-goods packaging can do. It has not made accessible packaging the default condition of the aisle.

Real-world examples

In the news

Blindness & Beauty: How Visually Impaired Women Are Changing an Industry That Ignored Them (July 2018)
-- Devon Abelman, Allure

• Allure reported that Sam Latif worked with P&G to redesign Herbal Essences bottles with raised stripes for shampoo and circles for conditioner after years of inaccessible beauty packaging. The redesign pushed product identification upstream into builder-side design inside a beauty sector that had long expected blind consumers to compensate on their own.³

In the news

Olay Developed an Easy-Open Moisturizer Lid for People With Limited Mobility (November 2021)
-- Nicola Dall'Asen, Allure

• Allure reported that Olay responded to customer complaints about hard-to-open moisturizer jars with a winged Easy Open Lid developed with disabled users, therapists, and user-experience experts. The redesign moved some dexterity burden upstream through design and iteration, but the article also showed the limit: the lid was available only through Olay's website rather than on ordinary retail shelves.⁶

In the news

P&G Designs Packaging for the Visually Impaired (June 2021)
-- Pat Reynolds, Packaging World

• Packaging World described how P&G integrated tactile notches for Herbal Essences into existing high-speed production lines rather than leaving accessibility stranded at the concept stage. The change moved through design, development, and iteration while production-speed constraints were being cited as barriers the team needed to work around.⁵

In the news

The consequences of poor communication in packaging for the blind and partially sighted (January 2024)
-- Augustus Bambridge-Sutton, FoodNavigator

• FoodNavigator reported that inaccessible packaging still produces wrong purchases, wasted money, dietary mistakes, and allergy risk for blind and partially sighted shoppers. That broader market context explains why tactile markers, clearer labels, and audio-readable codes matter and why they remain only partial frontier practice.¹³

• PAC Global's 2025 case study said Latif moved into inclusive-design work at P&G in 2015 and became the company's first Accessibility Leader in 2019.¹
• Allure's 2022 profile of Latif linked Herbal Essences tactile markers, Olay's Easy Open Lid, and Clearblue's Be My Eyes support into one disability-led accessibility portfolio inside P&G.²
• In 2026, P&G said Olay Regenerist had become the first facial moisturizer with a tactile symbol on its cap and that earlier P&G award-winning packs included tactile markers, easier-open systems, and NaviLens on some detergent packaging.⁸⁹

What care sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Care at the requirement-setting, design, qa-testing, and iteration stages means changing the package before shoppers have to compensate:

• "Our goal at P&G is to start a conversation around accessibility in packaging design."⁵
• "If we want the world to be inclusive, we need to create things that everyone can use, not just special things for the disabled people here in one corner."²
• "We can't do it alone, which is why we've chosen not to patent this lid, and rather share the design widely with the beauty community."⁷

What neglect sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Neglect shows up when consumer-goods companies keep packaging visual, slippery, or hard to open and treat adaptation as the customer's problem:

• "The labels are different colors. That should be enough."
• "If someone can't tell the bottles apart, they can mark them at home."
• "Most people can open the jar, so the pack already works."

What compensation sounds like (navigator-side compensations)

Compensation describes the extra labor blind shoppers, low-vision shoppers, and shoppers with limited dexterity still carry when packaging teams leave identification and opening burdens downstream:

• "I used to put an elastic band around shampoo or sellotape on conditioner to remind me."¹²
• "I literally had to Google how to open this jar."⁶
• "If you want to be independent, if you want to be confident, you don't want to be asking family members 'What bottle is this?'"⁵
• "I need to use pliers on tins with pull tabs."¹⁷

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All observations occur within United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand consumer-goods packaging systems, where brand managers, packaging engineers, retailers, disabled shoppers, and caregivers negotiate who can identify, open, and use everyday products without extra labor.

Footnotes

1. PAC Global: Universal Design | Case Study — P&G Launches Herbal Essences Bottles with Tactile Markings for Blind and Partially Sighted People ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Allure: What It's Like to Create Accessible Beauty Products for a Living ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. Allure: Blindness & Beauty: How Visually Impaired Women Are Changing an Industry That Ignored Them ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Vogue: Beauty is designing packaging for the visually impaired ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Packaging World: P&G Designs Packaging for the Visually Impaired ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

6. Allure: Olay Developed an Easy-Open Moisturizer Lid for People With Limited Mobility ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. Global Cosmetic Industry: Olay Creates Easy Open Lid for Regenerist Moisturizers ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

8. P&G: Four P&G Brands Raise the Bar with Accessible and Sustainable Packaging ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

9. P&G: P&G Brands Recognized for Packaging That's Accessible and Sustainable ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

10. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications: Visual communication via the design of food and beverage packaging ↩ ↩²

11. Packaging Dive: Hard-to-open packaging a concern for designers and the public ↩ ↩² ↩³

12. Global Cosmetic Industry: Herbal Essences' Inclusive Bottle Design Aims to Change Hair Care for Visually Impaired ↩ ↩²

13. FoodNavigator: The consequences of poor communication in packaging for the blind and partially sighted ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

14. PubMed: The neglected barrier to medication use: a systematic review of difficulties associated with opening medication packaging ↩ ↩²

15. PubMed: The difficulty of opening medicine containers in old age: a population-based study ↩ ↩²

16. Arthritis Australia: A consumer perspective on hard-to-open packaging ↩ ↩²

17. Arthritis New Zealand: Milk bottles are hardest to open ↩